


dawn light, twilight, infinity

by sharkfights (feartown)



Category: Orphan Black (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Drug Use, F/F, a horse called george, also me: [writes an absurdly long au], me: i don't write aus, that this fic goes against like 80 percent of my principles says a lot about my state of mind rn, the explicit warning is for chapter 2 js, with like an incredible lack of angst i mean??? who am i
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-09-08
Updated: 2014-09-22
Packaged: 2018-02-16 13:08:26
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 17,301
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2270886
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/feartown/pseuds/sharkfights
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Delphine, escaping from the world at large, meets Cosima, a carnival worker who only knows how to embrace it.</p><p>An AU serving mostly as a love letter to the long ends of summer.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. one

**Author's Note:**

> this fic is in two parts (part 2 is actually mostly drafted at this point and it is already nearly as long as this is /edited/ so.... uh... i'm sorry) and the second part will be posted probably within a week. i hope you like it (seriously like, if you want the very definition of "gently meandering while achieving very little", yk, you've come to the right place!!).
> 
> title from woodkid's "boat song".

* * *

 

Delphine feels like she’s on the run.

The sun sits high and Stevie Nicks sings about love as she passes fields tall with corn, her hair fanned back by the steady rush of the A/C. Delphine checks the map that’s spread across the passenger seat of her car and looks back up just in time to dodge another pothole. The drive to her aunt’s country house is as winding and hot as she remembers from her youth, the air heavy around the outside of the car and shimmering along the road in front of her. The steering wheel sits warm under her hands, and for a moment she has never more fully understood the appeal of Thelma and Louise.

 _It will be good for you_ , Maman had said, still believing Delphine spends too much time in the smoke of the city, wasting her lungs in smog and fumes. Delphine had to bite the inside of her cheek when she heard that, to keep herself from saying _I think the cigarettes will be happy to waste my lungs well before the city does_.

She is perhaps right, though. There are no exes to turn up at her door out here, no one to pointedly ask _so what are you going to do now_? Here there is only the bucolic sprawl of trees and fields rolling out towards the mountains, the sun licking up over the back porch, dew on the grass in the mornings. It will give her time to clear her head, at least.

 

When she finally arrives, she parks her car in the shade next to the house and finds her key, pushing hard with her shoulder to get the front door open. The house isn’t large, one bedroom below and two above, but it is wide-windowed and stuffy with yellow heat; familiar and welcoming.

And it’s quiet. The city always seems to hum under her fingers, in her bones, there’s always noise twitching in her eardrums there. But out here it’s so quiet you could hear the sky speak.

Inside, she opens all the doors and feels the breeze chase out the stifling warmth that has been bottled up for months. Delphine takes the sheets off the furniture, hangs them out on the porch railing. She unpacks her things, shakes the dust out of the house’s bones and settles herself in.

 

When the day starts to cool and turn shades of pink, Delphine goes upstairs to turn the shower on, keen to wash away the sweat of the afternoon, the grime of the road, the sun on her skin. However, when she twists the handle nothing happens.

“No,” she says in horror, and runs to the sink. Nothing. Not even a trickle.

Delphine runs back down to the kitchen, and almost cries in relief when the tap there rumbles to life, spitting out a cough or two of water before resolving into a steady stream. She peers out the living room window to the backyard – the old porcelain tub is still there, covered in a mess of weeds and vines. It’s better than nothing.

Finding a bucket in the laundry, she attacks the tub with soapy water, scrubbing away the weeds and dirt stains until the inside, at least, is pristine again. Then she fills it halfway with hot water, and throws a quick look in every direction – just in case – before discarding her clothes.

She leans back, tub cold against her spine. Birds squabble in the trees somewhere above, the leaves trembling against the darkening orange sky, and as goosebumps rise on her bare arms she feels almost like the world is falling asleep around her.

She closes her eyes. Maman was right.

 

 

Delphine has only been in the house a few days before she sees an unexpected sight out her bedroom window.

Distracted from her book by the sound of hooves, she looks out to see a strange young woman meandering down the narrow road on the back of a horse. Her hair in dreads and a pair of glasses perched on her nose, she throws a quick look at the house as she rides up, apparently noting Delphine’s car in the driveway.

The horse she rides is actually not really a _horse_ , Delphine thinks - too short and stocky. Much different from the tall and sleek Selle Fran _ç_ ais she remembers her friends back home riding while growing up. As she gets closer Delphine can see she’s not even riding it with the right tack; there’s no saddle visible under the long skirt the woman is wearing, and only some crude rope contraption around its face serves as a bridle.

The horse even has dreads of sorts, fabric braided through its mane and tail, as though the two are off to some bohemian equine gathering. She thinks about opening the window and calling out, but she doesn’t want to startle the horse (since the woman is not wearing a helmet, either) and she doesn’t know what she’d say anyway. What are you doing? Where did you come from? Who _are_ you?

Instead she simply watches the pair disappear down the road, her book suddenly forgotten.

 

It’s a couple of days before she sees the woman again, travelling in the same direction, her dreads bundled on her head this time. Delphine’s in the kitchen when she rides past, almost slicing her finger right off when she catches the movement out of the corner of her eye.

 

She becomes the cynosure of Delphine’s stay, breaking up the long brood of her day with her appearances. Delphine starts to anticipate the noise of hooves, and one day when she’s occupying herself in the garden she looks up to see the woman stopping the little horse by the fence. She waves, and Delphine stands, trying to hide the fact that she has no real idea what gardening entails, she’s just been pulling things that look vaguely like weeds out of the ground for the last hour.

“So you’re the mysterious houseguest,” the woman says, a grin spread wide across her face.

“I doubt I am as mysterious as you,” Delphine replies, wiping earthy hands on the bare slope of her thighs before holding one out for the horse to sniff. She smiles at the weight of its breath, the hollow sound it makes in its nostrils as it inspects her, and the woman twirls a lock of mane between her fingers.

“Me?” she asks. “Nothing mysterious about me, dude, I am definitely thoroughly… knowable. In fact…”

She sticks out a hand.

“Cosima.”

“Co-si-ma,” Delphine says, and the name is a delightful settling of syllables in her mouth. She takes the offered hand, wincing at the black dirt on her fingers, but Cosima doesn’t seem to notice. She pats the horse’s shoulder.

“That’s me. And this is George.”

Delphine doesn’t know what she was expecting, but she laughs a little anyway, wondering at the continued absurdity of horse-people and the names they come up with.

Cosima pretends to be offended. “Before you laugh at his name you could at least tell us yours, you know.”

“Oh, sorry, je m’app—my name is Delphine. It is nice to meet you.”

Cosima makes an approving sort of noise, “So what are you doing out here in the literal middle of nowhere, _Delphine_?”

She pauses for a moment. “I am… hiding,” she admits eventually, with a somewhat rueful smile.

“Ooh,” Cosima says, waggling her eyebrows. “A fugitive?”

“You could say that.” She frowns faintly, not sure why she feels compelled to explain to Cosima the real reason for her being here. “My last relationship… it did not end so well. I do not advise mixing mentorships and romance, if you wanted to know.”

Cosima smiles. “I’ll keep that in mind.”

“Do you… you must live around here, yes?”

“Yeah, like fifteen minutes that-a-way,” Cosima replies, jerking a thumb over her shoulder. “By horse, anyway.”

Delphine nods. “I have seen you riding almost every day since I’ve been here. It’s a curious sight for someone who has spent so long in the city.”

“The city, huh? I vaguely remember what that’s like.”

Delphine smiles, watching the sun illuminate the dark brown coat of the horse next to her into brilliant sheens of gold, and the gentle in and out of his belly behind Cosima’s leg. She scratches the rough skin on his nose and runs her fingers over the long whiskers under his chin. “Your horse is very beautiful.”

Cosima seems oddly proud of this. “Thanks. He’s a pretty good dude. But we should probably get going, as much as I’d like to um, stay and chat.”

There’s a note of cleverness in Cosima’s tone that Delphine can’t figure out the intention of, but she smiles anyway. “Well I’m sure I will see you around. I am here for… for a while.”

“Cool,” Cosima says, clucking to the horse beneath her and urging him awake again, her legs firm against his sides. He wanders forward, and Delphine bends back down to her poor attempts at gardening, feeling strangely invigorated by the conversation.

“Ciao,” she says, as Cosima throws one last look over her shoulder.

“Ciao,” Cosima parrots with a teasing wave of fingers, and sends the horse into a brisk trot as they head off down the road.

 

 

 

The next time she sees Cosima, it’s on a day that dawns dreary and damp, mist clinging to the hills out behind the house, and both girl and horse are soaked through from a recent downpour when they ride past.

Without even thinking, she hurries outside with a towel and Cosima grins when she sees her, glasses fractal with water drops.

“Mon dieu, Cosima, you are saturated,” Delphine says, handing up the towel. She scrapes the side of her hand over George’s shoulder to watch water sluice out of his coat, flicking the excess off her fingers. “Is this ludicrous endeavour in lieu of a shower?”

Cosima, face buried in the towel and glasses hanging precariously off a finger, makes a sound halfway between a chuckle and affirmation. Delphine carefully takes the glasses, drying them on the edge of the towel Cosima isn’t using before cleaning the smudges left behind with the hem of her shirt. Cosima, slinging the towel around her shoulders, grins some toothy excuse for a demure smile as she watches.

“I think it’s safe to say there’s no part of me that’s still dry at this point,” she says, a wince forming when she shifts on George’s back to confirm.

Delphine hands Cosima’s glasses back to her, almost sheepish at the impulsive gesture of taking them in the first place, and Cosima settles them back on her nose.

“You’re a real hero, Delphine,” she says, handing the towel back and gathering up the rope she’s still using for reins.

“Oh, Cosima, you cannot tell me you are going to keep riding when you are wet like this. Please, I have a dryer and I am almost sure it still works; let me dry your clothes – and your horse, somehow – you will both end up miserable otherwise.”

“No, Delphine, honestly – I’ll be late for work, don’t even worry about it.”

“Work? That is where you go every day?” Delphine hadn’t even considered Cosima’s destination on her many appearances.

“What did you think I was doing?” Cosima asks.

“I… well, you are riding a horse; I suppose I assumed you were exercising him. I have never seen anyone use one instead of a car before.”

Seeing that Cosima is making no move to take up her offer of the dryer, Delphine curls a finger through the rope around George’s face and tugs, clucking in some imitation of the noise Cosima uses, until the horse steps forward. She lends a sly glance to Cosima above, mouth pressed into a smile, and Cosima rolls her eyes but doesn’t stop Delphine from leading the horse up the drive.

“Sarah’s gonna kill me,” she says, though she doesn’t sound particularly bothered by it.

“Sarah is your boss?”

“Ha, she’d like to think so.”

Delphine stops near the front door. “Since you are using this horse instead of a car, you can tie him under the carport, if you like.”

“Hmm, poetic,” Cosima murmurs, and swings a leg over George’s neck before sliding wetly to the ground. Delphine stares a moment – has this girl had _any_ formal equine training? – before making an attempt to find some twine, anything, that Cosima could use to secure the horse in one place.

“He will just stand, you know,” Cosima says nonchalantly, watching as Delphine almost capsizes over an old metal drum. As if to prove her point, George shifts his weight and rests a leg, hoof tipped against the ground, and lets out a sigh.

“I… okay. I will get him another towel, yes?”

“Ugh, you’re gonna ruin him; he’ll think he deserves special treatment all the time now.”

 

 

After the horse is tended to, Delphine finds Cosima a dry shirt and a pair of loose shorts that almost fit, before throwing her wet clothes in the dryer and sighing with relief when it rumbles to life.

Cosima is poking around the living room when Delphine finds her again, the long end of her shirt tucked into the waistband of the shorts sitting too low on her hips. She looks softer this way. Delphine is used to – funny, how she already feels _used_ to Cosima, having only talked to her for a grand total of ten minutes since knowing of her existence – so many straps and buckles and sharp lines of crop tops against tanned skin, all bright pinks and patterns, that this: grey and olive green, loose material gentle against all her curves, is something of a stark contrast.

She clears her throat, suddenly awkward. “Can I make you some tea? I have peppermint, or ginger if you prefer.”

“Peppermint sounds cool,” Cosima says, following her into the little kitchen. “These are some sweet digs you’ve got, is it super rude to ask how the hell you afforded it?”

“Oh, no,” Delphine says, filling the kettle with water and smiling as Cosima lights the stove for her, “it is not my house. My aunt is a very successful designer in Montreal, this is her summer home, but she is actually in Paris staying with my mother until October.”

“Damn, there goes my fantasy of seducing the wildly successful and wealthy art dealer,” Cosima says, leaning back against the counter with a crooked grin before she realizes what she’s just said. “Not – I mean – not that I was planning on seducing you, or anything, like, not on the agenda at all, it—it was… I’m just kidding, or whatever. Sorry.”

Her hasty apology is accompanied by an animated flailing of her hands, and Delphine can’t help the wide-eyed smile that crosses her face. “That really is a fantasy,” she says.

For a moment Cosima’s face falls, but then Delphine clarifies: “You thought I was an art dealer?” and her grin momentarily reappears.

“I dunno, it seemed to fit – you’re foreign, you seem like the kinda person who travels a lot, like, that car outside is _definitely_ a rental… _and_ you’re charming. I wanted to speculate, sue me.”

“Well, sadly, I have no artistic bones in my body, I would certainly not be… what did you say, ‘wildly successful’?”

“And wealthy,” Cosima chirps. “…And hot,” she adds, after a beat, tongue between her teeth.

Delphine snorts. “I thought you _weren’t_ seducing me.”

“It’s just an observation,” Cosima says, ducking behind Delphine as the kettle boils and taking it off the heat. Before Delphine can do anything, Cosima’s put an easy hand on her hip and moved her neatly out of the way so she can reach up and pull the box of tea off the shelf above their heads. It’s a much tighter stretch for Cosima’s shorter frame, a palm balanced on the counter underneath her, but she does it in such a practiced way that she could have been in this kitchen a thousand times before.

“So what _do_ you do?” Cosima asks, putting teabags in the mugs Delphine hands her and pouring water dangerously close to the rim of them.

“I just got my doctorate, actually. In immunology.”

“Whoa, cool, a doctor? Maybe you don’t need to be an art dealer after all…” Cosima trails off, grinning, as she hands Delphine her tea.

Delphine shakes her head. “I would not get too caught up creating a new fantasy for yourself,” she says. “I am fairly certain I will not be a practicing doctor any time soon. Not here, anyway.”

“Wait, what? How come?”

“My… my _ex_ , if that is what you can call him; he is a very influential man. I’m not sure… with the way things ended… I don’t know. I would not be surprised if he has blacklisted my name in his circles already.”

“That’s rough,” Cosima says, setting her tea on the coffee table and flopping down onto the couch.

“Yes, well. I have no obligations to leave here until the end of next month, so I am trying not to think about anything until then,” Delphine says, sitting next to Cosima and hoping she doesn’t sound too desperate about it. It is one thing to be twenty-two and without anchorage, but it is entirely another to be on the cusp of thirty and finding oneself with no idea what to do next.

“Mmm, good plan,” Cosima says, “stay here and get a wicked tan, then go back to the city and kick some science ass.”

Delphine laughs, playing with the string of her teabag. “So where is the work that you and George go to on your leisurely walks past my window every day?”

“You know that shitty carnival that runs every summer? The one on the edge of town?”

Delphine nods.

“That’s me. I mean, I bar-back and do odd jobs during the winter, but I live in a caravan out the back of Sarah’s place and I don’t pay rent so my only real expense is George.” She pauses, like she doesn’t know if she should continue. “I actually went to college for science – I mean, the _intention_ was to head for microbiology, pretty similar to you, actually, I guess, but I kinda got… sidetracked. Dropped out, met Sarah; been here ever since. Three years this past June.”

“And you are… happy, doing this?” Delphine asks, not sure if she can hear sadness in Cosima’s tone or if she’s just imagining it – the _dropped out_ in her explanation was buried, but she can’t tell if it’s because Cosima doesn’t care or if it’s a skeleton she doesn’t want to elaborate on.

Cosima shrugs, getting up and looking out the window at the light drizzle that’s started falling. “Could be worse. I could be dead.”

“Optimistic of you,” Delphine says, and Cosima laughs.

“Why is there a bathtub outside?” she asks after a moment, peering out through the glass.

Delphine goes red. “The shower isn’t working, so I have been using that tub instead. _None_ of the water upstairs is working, actually.”

“Just upstairs? Wait. It has to be, we just made tea.”

“What are you thinking?” Delphine asks, almost too afraid to think she may have met someone actually capable of fixing the problem.

Cosima suddenly seems embarrassed by the knowledge she has. “Sounds like maybe there’s a valve stuck in the header tank. Can you get into your loft okay? Because if you can I can take a look at it for you.”

“Really?” Delphine says, “I have been trying to get a plumber out here for almost a week, but for some reason it has been impossible.”

“Yeah, a lot of us around here have just learned how to fix things ourselves, the only useful plumber within a hundred mile radius costs like, the actual Earth, so.”

Without giving Delphine a chance to reply, Cosima heads for the stairs.

Delphine directs her to the loft hatch, hidden in the closet of the spare bedroom, and manages to locate a screwdriver when Cosima asks for it. When she gets back, Cosima has moved the lid of the hatch to the side by standing on a chair, and is back to poking around the room.

“Enjoying yourself?” Delphine asks.

Cosima grins.

“Okay,” she says, taking the screwdriver from Delphine and putting it between her teeth. “Gimme a boost.”

Delphine stares blankly. “How?”

“You say that like I weigh a thousand tons.”

“I—no, that’s—”

“Oh my god, Delphine, relax. It was a joke,” Cosima says, taking the screwdriver out of her mouth and putting a hand on her arm.

“Oh…” she starts, but loses her train of thought when Cosima steps close to her and finds her wrists, placing Delphine’s hands low on the small of her back and smiling up at her with some emotion Delphine can’t quite decipher.

“Bend down so your shoulder’s level with my hips and hoist, basically. I’ll use the doorframe to give us a hand since I’m so _heavy_ and everything.”

“Okay.”

She follows Cosima’s instructions, forgetting herself for a moment as her cheek presses hard into the dip of Cosima’s waist, the scent of her own laundry detergent heady in her nose.

Thoroughly ungracefully, they manage to get Cosima in the air, and with a little help from Delphine she pulls herself into the hatch and disappears.

After a moment, a light goes on and she can hear the creaking sound of footsteps above, then the sound of metal on metal and a few choice swear words before everything goes quiet.

And stays quiet.

“Cosima?” she calls, a little worried.

Cosima’s head reappears within a minute. “All done.”

“What? Already?”

“Yeah, easy job. You could have done it yourself if there were any semblance of an internet connection out here.”

“Oh, Cosima, thank you. You have saved my life.”

“Nah, just your need to use an outdoor tub like some kind of woodland creature, or whatever. Help me down?”

She grabs Cosima’s legs when they drop through the hole, and with minimal struggle they get her on the ground again. Delphine pretends not to feel some strange disappointment at the sudden lack of contact.

“I can pay your for your help, if you like,” she says, but Cosima shakes her head.

“Dude, I’m wearing your clothes and my _horse_ is wearing three towels in your carport, I think you’ve done enough.”

“Then let me drive you to work,” she says, insistent. “You will still be late, but perhaps only by minutes instead of hours. George can stay in one of the fields out the back – Margery did not buy any cattle this year so they’ve been empty for months.”

Cosima looks like she’s going to refuse, then changes her mind. “Fine, you’ve got yourself a deal.”

 

 

They send George careening cheerfully off into one of the fields, grass around his knees, then Cosima changes back into her clothes and climbs into the passenger seat of Delphine’s car.

The drive is only five minutes, but it makes Delphine wonder about the distance Cosima rides every day – twice over.

“When do you finish working?” she asks, not able to ignore her curiosity.

“Usually about ten,” Cosima says, completely casual, most of her attention fixed out her side window.

“At night?” Delphine says, incredulous. “You ride home in the dark?”

“Sometimes I sleep in Sarah’s office, but mostly, yeah. There’s another road I generally take back, because there’s a farm that Sarah’s property backs onto? And the owner lets me ride through it. Cuts like a half hour off the trip.”

“Then why do you not ride it _to_ work as well?”

Cosima draws her knees up under herself to sit crosslegged and grinning. “How else would I catch a glimpse of the hot French chick at number 54 every morning?” she asks.

Delphine knows she’s lying, somehow, something in her tone betrays it, but she doesn’t press for the real answer.

“Oh, you can turn left and stop just up here,” Cosima says suddenly, and unbuckles her seatbelt.

Delphine does as she asks, and looks out the window at the shabby – but apparently still rather popular – carnival grounds.

“Home sweet home,” Cosima says, with more than a touch of sarcasm.

Delphine clears her throat. “Uh, since I have… taken possession of your ‘ride’, I can, I could pick you up, after—”

“Oh my god, Delphine, seriously. You’ve done enough; I’ll just get a ride home from Sarah and come get George on my day off tomorrow. It’s not far to walk, I swear.”

“Well, okay, but, if it is your day off then do you want to come and have dinner? Not as a thank you, I promise. It’s just… nice to make a friend, I didn’t realize how isolated it was out here without company.”

“Sure,” Cosima says. “I’ll bring the wine.”

And with that, she’s out of the car and gone in seconds, a wave and a _thanks again!_ tossed back over her shoulder.

 

 

Delphine watches George out the window all evening, strangely compelled whenever she sees a swish of tail out of the corner of her eye. She also wastes at least three perfectly good apples on him – laughing at herself for trying to get a _horse_ to like her as though it will curry favour with his bewitching owner.

 

 

She’s on the fence inspecting a bare patch on George’s long nose; her feet hooked around one of the rails, sun baking deliciously across the tops of her shoulders, when Cosima finds her the next day.

She sneaks up in complete silence, stopping about a foot away before saying, “So, taken him for a joyride yet?”

Delphine shrieks and almost falls straight into the horse still standing in front of her, steadied only by Cosima’s strong arm around her waist, and she can feel her whole body shaking with laughter up against her back.

“I’m sorry, it was too good an opportunity to be missed,” she says, tugging on the hem of Delphine’s tank to straighten it out and hopping up on the fence with her. On the ground behind them is a bag that Delphine can see holds two bottles of red wine.

“Have you though?” Cosima asks, scratching an errant splotch of mud off her horse’s neck.

“Have I what?”

“Jumped on him; gone for a ride,” she says, like it’s the most natural thing in the world for a person to get on a relative stranger’s horse with no experience – or _tack_ to speak of – and _go for a ride_.

“I have not,” Delphine replies. “I doubt it would be very successful.”

“Bullshit! It’s not like he’s a racehorse, or whatever, you’d sooner fall off from accidentally zonking out on his back than you would from losing your balance.”

“Zonking… out?”

“Oh, like, falling asleep. He’s really slow, Delphine, seriously. I’m gonna get his bridle, we can ride together.”

“Cosima…”

But she’s already off to the carport where they hung the rope bridle to dry out the day before, returning with it and clucking to George so she can secure it around his face. Suddenly Delphine can see the reason for the hairless patch on the horse’s nose.

“That rope is harsh here,” she says, tracing it with her finger, “isn’t it?”

“Oh, yeah, it wasn’t originally? But he pulled back one day and I guess it kinda burnt, and I use it so often the hair hasn’t had a chance to really grow back. Not ideal, I guess, but I just haven’t had time to do anything about it.”

Delphine replies with a noncommittal noise, an idea forming in her head. It’s ridiculous, considering she barely knows Cosima, but she remembers the excess sailing line from the boat rusting away in the old shed; a garish blue that would stand out brilliantly against the horse’s spice-coloured coat. _And_ , she thinks, mind ticking over with ideas now, she’s sure she could cut some leather strips off a belt that no one would miss and braid them for pieces to sit across his nose and brow.

She tries to banish it, given that it is a lot of work and she’s not even sure Cosima would accept the gift – but another part of her reasons she also has two months of nothing to do, and Cosima is sidling George up to the fence with her hand outstretched for Delphine to take, smile warm in the corners of her mouth, and the idea starts to take solid root.

“Come on, swing a leg over,” Cosima says with a wink, and grabs Delphine’s hand firmly in her own.

“I do not even have shoes on, Cosima,” she says, awkwardly pushing off from the fence and sliding her legs either side of the horse’s back, settling snug against Cosima and feeling the dense weight of the animal beneath her. “And surely two of us is too heavy for him.”

Cosima sighs dramatically, and reaches behind herself to find Delphine’s hands and close them around her middle, leaving one against Delphine’s knuckles like she’s concerned Delphine has intentions to let go. She picks up the loop of rope with the other, and nudges George in the sides. “God, you’re so _proper_. He can handle two of us for five minutes, like, you have a really warped idea of body mass, Delphine. Aren’t you supposed to be a scientist?”

She jabs Cosima’s heel with a foot.

“Hey, rude.”

 

Their short ride is uneventful. The horse’s coat itches under her bare thighs, his spine less than comfortable where it juts against her seat bones – but his walk is long and swinging and Cosima is warm against her front, jabbering away to her about various horse intricacies she doesn’t understand. It doesn’t matter to Delphine, preoccupied with the vibrations of Cosima’s voice beneath her clasped hands, Cosima’s free fingers occasionally brushing against them as though she’s checking they’re still there, and her perfume – something woody, gingery – tickles her nose.

When Cosima jumps down she offers Delphine a hand again in some bizarre display of chivalry, and she slides off the horse with a gentle thud.

“Congratulations,” Cosima says, and brushes a hand against the inner hollow of Delphine’s thigh, fingers light above her knee. “You’ll wanna get rid of all that hair, probably. Sorry. It happens.”

Her _oh_ comes out a little strangled, and she pretends not to notice Cosima’s grin.

 

 

They leave the horse to his own devices, and inside Cosima sits on the counter to watch Delphine dice up vegetables on an old wooden chopping board, her fingers darting out to steal errant sticks of carrot when Delphine isn’t looking.

“So what’s for dinner, Doc?” she asks, and Delphine frowns at the added crunch of orange her words have to them.

“I am going to make a pasta dish – similar to lasagne but without the baking. You boil the pasta sheets separately and grill the vegetables, then there is a cheese sauce to go on top. At least, that is the plan… if you do not eat all the vegetables first.”

“Got it,” Cosima says. “Can I like, do anything to actually help?”

“You could grate the cheese for the sauce and put it in a pot with the ricotta, if you like. The block of parmesan is in the top of the refrigerator.”

 

Cosima, she learns, is not adept in the kitchen.

“Wait, you have to stir it the whole time?” she asks, staring down at the pale mass of cheese and milk bubbling in the pot in front of her.

“Yes,” Delphine replies, grinding pepper into the mixture as Cosima picks up the wooden spoon again. “If you leave it, it will stick to the bottom and burn. Do you not cook?”

Cosima shrugs. “I can use a microwave… and make salad, I guess. Usually I just eat whatever I can find, though. Cereal’s popular, and occasionally when Felix – that’s Sarah’s brother – cooks he leaves leftovers, but it’s pretty basic stuff.”

“Oh,” Delphine says, oddly sad at the image of Cosima alone in her trailer every night with not even decent food for company.

“I know, right? I’m almost 30 and I can’t even feed myself unless I follow instructions from a box. Is this done?”

Delphine looks in the pot. “Yes, you can take it off the heat now.”

 

They eat on the porch in the gathering dusk, and the glasses of wine Cosima pours are decidedly more than one would see in a restaurant.

“Are you trying to get me drunk?” she asks, as Cosima clinks glasses with her.

“What, do you have somewhere to be with your busy schedule tomorrow?” Cosima replies, an eyebrow rising.

“Brat.”

 

The food is good and the wine is better, and Cosima eats with a foot resting on the seat, her knee up near her face, talking with her fork between her fingers and around the food in her mouth and making Delphine laugh so hard at one point she almost chokes. She can’t remember the last time she had a conversation with someone that held so few expectations – there is no formula to Cosima’s wild, tangential storytelling, and Delphine can’t shake the idea that Cosima is as pleased as she is, for once, to talk to someone entirely without agenda.

It’s dark when they finish, the table and Cosima’s face lit only by the light from inside the house and the one lone citronella candle on the porch railing, moths sending fluttering shadows dancing across the cloth and plates between them.

They do the dishes in companionable silence, Cosima flicking bubbles at Delphine’s hands as she dries until she gets so annoyed she pinches her hip, and it strikes her how much it feels like she has known Cosima all her life. A week ago she didn’t know her name, and now Cosima is stacking soapy dishes next to the sink like she does it every day; feet bare on the floor and her nose ring glinting in the yellow light. Delphine smiles to herself, and turns a mug upside down onto one of the shelves above her head.

 

Cosima turns down her offer of tea, but after she retrieves George from behind the house she says, “Hey, listen. There’s a big like end of summer gig at the carnival on Friday night – fireworks, music, funhouse, stupid games – the works. Would you wanna… come? I’ll have to work for a bit but if you came after eight I could probably sneak off and hang out.”

“I would love to,” Delphine says, a beat too fast, and matches the grin that lights up Cosima’s face.

“Cool. That’s… totally, totally cool. Awesome.”

Before she can go anywhere, Delphine impulsively leans forward and presses her mouth to both of Cosima’s cheeks, lingering a moment too long before pulling back, and for once Cosima is speechless.

“I am… looking forward to it,” Delphine says, and Cosima nods.

“Yeah. Yeah, I’ll um, I’ll see you ‘round, then.”

“Bonne nuit, Cosima.”

“Bon… goodnight, Delphine.”

 

 

She actually sees Cosima every morning leading up to Friday, and by Thursday she’s letting herself in the door and making coffee before Delphine is even out of bed.

“This is unexpected,” she says, stopping at the bottom of the stairs and running a hand through her hair.

“Hey!” Cosima says, very bright for eight in the morning, and brandishes a muffin in Delphine’s face. “Look what Alison brought over this morning. You don’t have milk in your coffee, right?”

Delphine shakes her head, still not entirely convinced Cosima is actually whirling around her kitchen like a small hurricane. She thrusts a cup into one hand and a muffin the other, then steers Delphine to the couch, sitting her down before retrieving her own coffee and reclining beside her.

“Thank you, Cosima, you didn’t have to do this.”

“Seems only fair, dude, I’m still thinking about that pasta from our date the other night.”

“Date?” Delphine says, the coffee she sipped too fast burning down her throat.

Cosima grins. “You made me dinner and kissed me goodnight, come on. What else am I supposed to call it?”

Delphine can feel her heart hard against her chest. She didn’t even think – surely Cosima wouldn’t construe…

“Cosima, I…”

Cosima’s still grinning. She deflates.

“You are teasing me.”

“Absolutely. Relax, I know you’re not like, gay, or whatever. No sweat.”

There are a lot of things Delphine wants to say to that, but she still doesn’t understand all of them herself, and Cosima is already up off the couch again, looking at her watch and downing what’s left of the coffee in her mug.

“I’m late, again,” she says, “But um, I’ll see you tomorrow night, right?”

“Eight o’clock?”

“Yeah. I’ll meet you at the gate, if that’s cool.”

 

 

After she finishes her coffee, Delphine gets dressed and begins the task of getting the old shed door open. The hinges are rusted shut, and it’s not until she douses them with cooking spray and finds a crowbar that she can finally lever a human-sized crack in the door.

By the light of her phone she locates the bucket of sailing line, still as bright as she remembers, and she gathers a long length of it to take back inside, hoping no one notices its absence.

 

On a notepad she sketches a crude and inaccurate outline of a horse’s face, and tries to remember the way Cosima had tied the pieces of rope on George’s bridle. She goes to the bookshelf, and spies her aunt’s collection of coffee table books. Feeling ridiculous, she flicks through three of them before she finds what she’s looking for – a clear photograph of a horse and rider. It’s not a Western bridle, but then, Delphine doesn’t even know if that’s the style Cosima would ride in, given that what she rides with presently gives absolutely no indication.

In her sketch she leaves the new bridle bitless, since she has no idea where she would procure one anyway, and keeps her lines simple – around the nose, behind the ears, under his chin, then down the length of his face. She thinks it will work; she only wishes George were still in her backyard so she could roughly measure her lengths and actually get started, desperate to occupy herself with something other than the thought of the approaching evening.

 

Friday seems to pass both too slowly and too fast, and when eight o’clock rolls around she’s sitting jittery behind the wheel of her car, trying to find somewhere to park outside the carnival grounds.

Cosima waits at the gate and waves when she sees her.

“Right on time,” she says, and loops her arm through Delphine’s. “We’re going to drink beer.”

 

Cosima isn’t kidding: the beer stand is run by Sarah’s brother Felix, and he raises one perfectly manicured eyebrow when he catches sight of Delphine.

“Well,” he says, incredibly British, “This one’s _definitely_ not a local.”

“Beer, Felix,” Cosima says, ignoring the comment.

“Shouldn’t you be working the funhouse?” Felix asks, handing over two plastic cups of cheap beer that slosh at the edges, and Cosima looks in the direction of the brightly painted building to their left.

“Helena’s covering for me,” Cosima says, and they can just make out a tangle of bleached blonde hair at the door, the eyes beneath it popping almost out of their sockets. “Personally I think she does a much better job than me.”

 

With shitty beer in her system, Delphine finds herself leaning closer to Cosima, her smiles looser and wider, and every time Cosima laughs she feels something warm blossom in her chest. It’s a nice feeling, something she hasn’t genuinely felt in a long time. Cosima is so free, confident and effervescent and driven by some bright spark of almost feral impulse – unchecked, unwavering – that Delphine can’t help but be drawn in by it.

 

Cosima drags her to a game stall, some vividly-advertised horseshoe-throwing nonsense, and hoists herself up on the counter.

“It is not lit up like the others,” Delphine notes.

“No one ever comes to it. Keeping the power on all the time just loses us money. But I mean, it still works, no power required, so you can win me a stuffed bear regardless.”

It’s a joke – as is eighty percent of what Cosima says, Delphine’s learned – but she sticks a hand out anyway. “Okay then, give me the horseshoes.”

Cosima looks at her for a moment, then shrugs and leans back, digging under the counter for a handful of plastic horseshoes and handing them over.

“It says five tries, you have given me six.”

Cosima shrugs again. “I guess someone likes you.”

The first two shoes she sends well off course, they both hit the back wall and miss by a mile, and the third she doesn’t throw far enough, overcompensating.

Cosima nudges her with a foot against the back of her thigh. “Closer.”

“This feels like cheating.”

“Because it totally is,” Cosima replies, and hooks a finger through a belt loop on Delphine’s shorts. “Rest your hips against the counter, lean forward…” she presses a hand to Delphine’s shoulder, and it brings her mouth close to her ear. Delphine tries not to shiver, feeling some strange sense of _imminence_ beginning on the air, glittering at the edges of her vision.

Cosima slides a hand all the way down her arm, gentle fingers pulling her wrist forward until her hand is only two or three feet from the first tier of bottles she’s supposed to be aiming for.

“Look, now if you lose it’ll just be super embarrassing.”

Delphine throws the horseshoe, and it lands perfectly around a second tier bottle.

Cosima claps, and reaches up above her head to pull down a bright green bear with a top hat on. Delphine, hypnotized, watches the stretch of muscle in her stomach as her shirt rides up, and unconsciously sinks her teeth into her lip.

“Just what I’ve always wanted,” Cosima says, looking at the bear in her hands.

Delphine means to answer her, find some joking reply to volley back and send Cosima into that warm honey-laugh she likes so much, but somewhere between the beer and the bear she’s forgotten how joking works, she’s forgotten everything except the smooth bridge of Cosima’s skin from hip to rib that has burned itself onto the backs of her eyes.

Stepping forward, Delphine plucks the bear from Cosima’s fingers and tosses it aside, suddenly possessed by some great sea of desire that swells tidal against her chest. Cosima’s _hey_ of protest dies on her lips as soon as she realizes what’s happening, her lips parting as Delphine crowds in. She leans forward, pausing in the space between too far and not far enough, before closing the gap and kissing Cosima soundly on the mouth.

It’s easier to be brave in the dark.

Cosima immediately surges upward, a gasp on her tongue and her thighs dropping open so Delphine can step between them. Delphine, nerves taut and shivering, loses herself in the slope of Cosima’s lips and the slide of her tongue against teeth. Her hands wind around to the small of Cosima’s back, urged by the noises she can feel building in her throat. She kisses hungrily, like she’s swallowed deserts, like Cosima is the end of dust and barren trenches of cracked earth, seeping life back into her skin. Cosima draws her closer, groaning into her, and her mouth parts wide as Delphine lets her teeth scrape over her bottom lip.

She doesn’t realize how far backwards she’s pushed them – until Cosima flings an arm around her neck to keep from falling right onto the counter, a heel hooked around Delphine’s knee.

And then there is a sudden rush of panic somewhere inside her, and she pulls back from Cosima’s mouth with a wet catch of breath, her hands sliding back along her thighs in rising terror.

“Oh… Cosima, I… I’m so sorry.”

“You’re… sorry?” Cosima asks, adjusting the glasses that have gone askew on her nose, a knuckle unconsciously swiping against the curve of her lip.

“Yes, I didn’t mean… the liquor, it… _merde_. I’m sorry,” she babbles, and then she says “It’s okay,” as though it actually is, and then she shakes her head. “Merde, I’m so sorry. I have to go, Cosima. I’m sorry.”

She turns, ducking back through the crowds and to her car, leaving Cosima open-mouthed and speechless, her hand closing joylessly around a ridiculous bright green bear.

 


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Delphine traces the gentle curve of George’s nose, trying to figure out how to put into words the myriad feelings she has spent the last three days trying to puzzle through. She tells Cosima the one thing she’s managed to decide for sure: “I do not regret it. Kissing you.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> note: the drug use tw is just for a marijuana; a solitary marijuana. 
> 
> as usual i hope you like it, and THANK YOU so incredibly much for all your kind comments and wishes for updates; my heart is cold and dead but when i get those notifications it thaws for at least 3 seconds. i'm running out of ways to respond to praise (not that i had many to begin w) so i'm being a total jerk and throwing out another blanket of thanks ONCE AGAIN.

* * *

 

It takes a full hour for her heart rate to return to normal and stop thundering in her ears; longer still for the nausea to abate and for her hands to stop shaking. Her mouth tastes like stale beer and the reminder of Cosima’s lips, and for a long time she just sits in the dark on the porch and ruminates, surrounded by the rhythmic sound of crickets against the night.

It’s more the fact that she left with no explanation than it is kissing Cosima in the first place, she thinks, flushing guiltily when she remembers Cosima’s hipbones hard against her own, the flume of her mouth sending stars across her closed eyelids – no, it is definitely not the kissing that is the problem—though it is, too, at the same time—and. _No_. She sockets the heels of her palms into her eyes, hiding in the gentle black cocoon of them. She feels monstrous – literally, like some prehistoric leviathan with a midnight sprawl of wings and a heart full of smoke – for doing something like that to Cosima. It’s an overreaction, maybe, but she remembers the weakened look on Cosima’s face because of _her_ and—she shakes her head.

There’s another part of her that knows it’s all too much too quickly, the sensible part of her that remembers she came here to get _away_ from the complications of romantic attachments – the part that knows she should apologize for her actions. With a sinking feeling, it dawns on Delphine that she is going to have to be the monster once again and tell Cosima it was a mistake.

Getting up, Delphine makes a futile attempt to stretch the worry out of her muscles, and goes upstairs to her bedroom that suddenly feels too large, the bed too empty even though it has only been her in it since she arrived.

 

 

 

 

She doesn’t see Cosima for three days.

 

The bundle of bright blue rope sitting abandoned on the kitchen table takes on a very particular kind of mocking, and she makes several attempts to put it away completely, but somehow, it always seems to end up threaded through her hands again, corded around her bones. She looks forlornly at it and laments never having asked Cosima for her phone number (not that she’s a hundred percent sure she’d actually use it if she had it), thinking that at least then she'd know for sure if Cosima didn't want to speak to her.

 

The day she finally rides past again, Delphine is just out of the shower and hesitates for a split second before throwing on whatever she can find and racing out the door. Cosima is already a fair distance from the house, and she stands in the middle of the road to call out to her.

“Cosima!”

She twist’s on the horse’s back, startled, and then softens when she sees Delphine, turning George back towards her. Delphine feels her pulse quicken, and thinks of feathers the colour of ink.

“Hey,” Cosima says when she walks up, and she sounds apprehensive, _hesitant_ in a way that’s unfamiliar.

“Sorry for alarming you,” Delphine says, apologetic, “It’s just I have not seen you ride past since—well. I thought perhaps you were avoiding me. I wanted to make sure things were… okay.”

“Oh, no – I mean, work’s, you know, winding down for the season so I’m only doing a couple of days a week – I’m done all together after tomorrow, actually – but yeah, I kinda wanted to like, give you your space, and everything. After the other night. Didn’t want you to freak out.” She stops, teeth grazing over her lip in some half-formed smile: “Again.”

Delphine ducks her head. “I’m sorry, I feel like I have made things… messy.”

“No, it’s okay,” Cosima says, but Delphine knows perfectly well when Cosima is lying now, and she can hear the disappointment in her voice.

Delphine traces the gentle curve of George’s nose, trying to figure out how to put into words the myriad feelings she has spent the last three days trying to puzzle through. She tells Cosima the one thing she’s managed to decide for sure: “I do not regret it. Kissing you.”

Cosima looks down at the tangle of mane she’s threaded through her fingers. “Sounds like there’s a ‘but’ coming.”

Delphine nods, upset that she has to confirm Cosima’s fears. “I do not regret it but think it would be… better? If we remained friends. It is just… so soon after a relationship, and I have never…”

“Delphine, it’s totally okay, I understand,” Cosima says, waving a hand. “Friends is cool.”

Relieved, Delphine smiles. “Good. Perhaps we could have dinner again soon, then?”

To her credit, Cosima’s reciprocating smile is only a little forced. “Absolutely.”

She gathers up her reins, a signal Delphine has come to realize means the conversation is over, so she steps back – feeling some strange ache in her gut, like something still isn’t right.

Cosima nudges George forward, but seems to make a decision a few seconds later and stops again. “Just like, for the record: I don’t regret it either.”

She doesn’t give Delphine a chance to reply, but the comment settles the ache somewhat, and Delphine grins. _It would be easy_ , she thinks as she watches Cosima’s retreating back.

She makes it such a simple concept, so inviting: _it would be so easy to walk those few steps and fall in love with her_.

 

 

When she gets back inside Delphine sees the heap of blue rope on the table, and she’s suddenly very aware that if Cosima only has two days left at work then she has little time to measure George’s face without her finding out.

So, in the morning, with the previous day’s conversation bolstering her spirits, she embarks on a short stealth mission.

 

 

Parking her car out of sight of the carnival grounds, Delphine keeps an eye out for familiar peacock-patterns and the swing of Cosima’s dreads as she makes her way through the lagging throngs of people, children and adults alike clinging to the vestigial flickers of summer. She’s not entirely sure how to go about searching for the horse, but as she peers across the grounds she sees a possible solution to her problem.

Helena, blonde mop of frizzy hair bent over something in concentration, sits at a picnic table. As Delphine approaches she sees it’s a notepad, and Helena is furiously sketching the same stick figures over and over. She’s not an artist, but she has the passion of one, at least.

“You should not sneak up on people,” Helena says when Delphine reaches her, and her accent rolls thick off her tongue.

A part of Delphine wants to argue with Helena’s definition of _sneaking_ , but a larger part of her gets the feeling Helena wouldn’t appreciate a discussion on semantics. “Sorry—Helena, yes?” she asks instead.

Helena nods, not bothering to look up from the paper and pen clutched in her fists.

“I was looking for – I was wondering if you could tell me where Cosima keeps George while she is working?”

Helena appears to ignore her for a moment. Then Delphine sees the crude outline of a horse appear under her strokes of pen, and she looks up almost balefully, tilting her head. “You want to see horse-pig?”

“Hor—horse… pig?” she asks, not sure she’s heard correctly.

Smiling, Helena presses her lips together and lets out several highly accurate pig noises before continuing to stare Delphine down. She doesn’t blink. “Sestra’s _George_ ,” she says eventually, inexplicably turning the G into a Y, “Looks like horse, but eats like pig.”

When Delphine, not having a clue what to say to that, doesn’t answer, Helena reproachfully curls back into herself and points a finger towards a cluster of outbuildings.

“Behind there. Out-of- _sight_ ,” she says.

“Thank you.”

“You are very welcome,” Helena replies, disturbingly mechanical. Delphine leaves her to her pictures with the unsettling sense that she’s has been taught to say that robotic line in lieu of something else, and also that she doesn’t really want to know what that something else is.

 

 

When she finds George he is sufficiently uninterested in her presence, but stands obediently as she takes the lengths of rope she’s cut out of her bag anyway. Delphine marks the places she needs to knot with a black pen as she holds them against his face, and when she’s done he simply looks at her. She wonders, for a bizarre moment, why she expected him to say something.

“Please do not tell Cosima about this,” she tells him, deciding to embrace her feelings of stupidity, and scratches the end of his nose with a finger.

 

 

She’s walking back through the grounds when she hears her name, and when she turns around Cosima is climbing over the fence in front of the funhouse looking tentatively happy to see her.

“What are you doing here?” she asks, and Delphine almost wants to tell her the truth.

“I am… I thought perhaps since it is your last day we could… try to do over the other night,” she says, and it sounds like a lie to her ears. She makes an amendment. “Not the end.”

Cosima nods. “I assumed that part, actually,” she says, and she’s smiling but it’s tight in the corners – not _real_ the way Cosima has always struck her, and it makes Delphine want to take it back, choose a different lie to tell her.

“I’m sorry, I am pushing things,” she says, deciding maybe she should just leave altogether. “I can go, if you don’t want to.”

The unsettling faux-smile vanishes when Cosima shakes her head, “No, sorry, it’s not—I’m kinda supposed to be working, that’s all.”

“Oh, of course – it was… I’ll go,” she says, feeling steadily more stupid as the seconds tick past.

Cosima pauses, weighs something in her mind. Delphine knows she wants to say _yes, go_ and _no, please stay_ because Delphine feels torn between the same two things – she has wanted desperately to be alone and also wanted nothing more than to take Cosima’s face between her hands and kiss her until their atoms shake. She wants to tell Cosima she doesn’t know what her feelings mean, that they’re pencilled-in and smudged and she doesn’t know if they are binding, but she knows that they’re not going away – _please, tell me to go_.

 _Please, ask me to stay_.

She doesn’t say anything, however. She just waits.

“Why don’t you come hang out with me on my break?” Cosima says after a moment, and Delphine frowns.

“I thought you were working?”

“I was. Now I’m having lunch. The funhouse will be fine for ten minutes until Felix takes over, I’m sure no one’ll die.”

It’s not exactly a comforting statement, but she follows Cosima anyway, and they walk through the grounds until they get to an old prefab building. Cosima leads her inside and they’re met by a slouching, lumpy-sweatered woman sitting at a big metal table, a hand flicking back her dark mane of hair as she pours over a spread of documents.

“What the bloody hell are you doing in here?” she asks Cosima, with an oddly affectionate roughness, and Cosima grins at her.

“I let Helena have the funhouse back,” she says.

“You _didn’t_. Cos, after the last time—”

“Okay, no, I’m just screwing with you. She _may_ be plotting your murder on that notepad of hers though.”

Sarah lets out a gruff laugh. “She’s welcome to,” she says, voice the timbre of an animal-growl, and looks back down at the documents in front of her.

“Isn’t _Rachel_ supposed to be in charge of accounts?” Cosima asks, picking up a piece of paper and scanning it quickly.

“Rachel,” Sarah says contemptuously, “Took off on some prat’s bloody yacht for the rest of the week. Alison said she was going to come help me out but she’s probably having yet another crisis so it looks like it’s up t’me.”

“Hey,” Cosima says, smirking, “I thought you said you were good at numbers in high school.”

Sarah snorts. “Too bad they weren’t anythin’ to do with maths.”

Cosima turns to Delphine, who is caught up in absorbing the infinite tenderness apparent between the other two people in the room. “Could we maybe take a raincheck?” she asks. “Sorry, I know you wanted to hang out, but I should really help this one out so she doesn’t… you know, off herself. Or me.”

“I’m right here,” Sarah mutters from the table.

“No, of course,” Delphine says. “I shouldn’t have come anyway.”

“I’m glad you did,” Cosima says, though Delphine still thinks she can hear something hesitant in her voice. “Dinner, right? Soon.”

Delphine nods.

 

 

 

 

But Cosima doesn’t turn up for dinner the next night, or the night after that. Nausea settles back in Delphine’s stomach, the shadow of wings sprout, and she worries that she really did push Cosima too hard trying to be friends.

In a fit of nervousness she finishes the rope bridle in a matter of hours, sitting out on the fence and testing the pull of the knots, the strength of the leather she’s strapped over the two sides to connect them together.

She wonders, when she’s done, how to even give it to Cosima. Whether she should seek her out or not, whether it will push Cosima even further away to be confronted by yet another gesture Delphine doesn’t entirely understand herself.

She should really drop the issue altogether. She should wait to see if Cosima comes to her, let it be on her terms.

But then, she’s never been very good at the passive act and she realizes, with some amount of concern, that the ache that keeps twisting in her gut is an ache that means _you miss her_.

 

 

So the next day she takes a drive.

She keeps an eye out both sides of the car for the old house she remembers Cosima mentioning in one of her many meandering stories. When she comes across an old two-storeyed farmhouse set back from the road, a house that looks almost lopsided – caravan parked on the unkempt lawn next to it – she assumes that must be it. She can’t see George anywhere, but she recognizes the battered old station wagon in the driveway from the carnival grounds, so she parks her car behind it and steps out.

Then, apprehensive that Cosima might really not want to see her, Delphine knocks on the caravan door.

Inside there’s a series of creaks, the sound of shifting metal, then the door opens and Cosima stands on the threshold above her, a joint propped in her mouth.

“Delphine?” she says, not able to hide her disbelief. “How did you…?”

“Sorry—”

Cosima rolls her eyes and sticks her joint behind her ear. “Okay, can you like, stop doing that? People usually only apologize when they’ve done something wrong, so,” she stands aside and gestures with a hand for Delphine to come in, then shuts the door behind them.

The caravan is small, a shrine to patterns and knick knacks and piles of books, and Delphine feels much too tall for it. The checkered linoleum beneath her feet is peeling in the corners, there are faded and scratched wooden doors on the cabinets and partly hiding the bed nestled at the back – which, she notes, is covered in clothing she recognizes the colours of far too well.

“Uh, make yourself at home,” Cosima says with a note of embarrassment, “It’s not much.”

“It suits you,” Delphine says, because it does. She sits down at the small square of table crammed between the counter and a bookshelf, knees tucked right up against the underside of it, and Cosima sits opposite her.

“So what brings you here?” Cosima asks, foot coming up to rest on her seat. “Morbid curiosity?”

Delphine smiles, runs the curtain fabric at her shoulder between thumb and index finger. “You and George still have not come for dinner, I was just making sure…”

“Oh, yeah. Right,” Cosima says, and there’s something wrong with the way she says it. She picks at a non-existent speck on her knee.

“Cosima?”

When Cosima looks up her eyes are searching, and suddenly Delphine feels flooded with an eerie kind of worry, because something seems to be terribly amiss about all of this – Cosima’s quietude, the thickness of the air, the way she’s never quite meeting Delphine’s eyes as they scan across her face.

Cosima finally sighs and her hand skims out in some gesture of _this is stupid_. She taps a knuckle against the window. “George is gone.”

“What?”

The laugh Cosima lets out is less a laugh and more a noise of strangled exasperation, and she shakes her head. “He was stolen.”

“ _Stolen_?”

“Okay, wow, no, I regret that choice of words when you say it – George is like, kinda… sorta technically not my horse. ‘Stolen’ isn’t really… the correct term.”

Delphine doesn’t really know what to say.

“Yeah,” Cosima says, apparently understanding. “You know how I said I ride over the farm this place backs onto? _Tech_ nically, that’s where he’s meant to live. The guy who owns the place is like, a totally poor excuse for a human being though, he was running George in with a bunch of cows for months? I wasn’t even sure if he knew he _had_ a horse…”

She trails off. Delphine waits.

“So anyway,” she continues when she knows Delphine isn’t going to call her out. “I just… moved him one day. Nothing happened. Nothing happened for _eight months_ , and then the other day he came over and started screaming at Sarah – who is, obvs, no longer talking to me – and… took him back.” She smiles awkwardly. “Now you know the truth. I’m a bona fide horse rustler, and if that’s totally not your bag I’ll understand.”

Delphine tilts her head. She can tell her silence is making Cosima uncomfortable. Then, leaning across the table – or, reaching her arm across the gap, since it is barely a table – she plucks the joint from behind Cosima’s ear and holds it in the air between them. “I have never smoked one of these before.”

Concealing her surprise at the rapid change of subject, Cosima’s mouth quirks into a tiny smile. “For real?”

Delphine shrugs. “Cigarettes, they have been…” she wiggles her fingers, “A pastime. Never pot, though.”

Cosima’s smile blossoms. She reaches behind her and locates a lighter, and Delphine takes the cue to put the joint between her lips. Cosima just watches her for a moment, unreadable, and Delphine almost closes her eyes at the sudden remembrance of sinewy lines pressed up against her body under the glare of carnival lights.

She takes courage from the image and finds Cosima’s hand, drags it and the lighter to the end of the joint and keeps her there. Cosima clears her throat.

“Hold it in,” she says, and Delphine doesn’t understand.

Cosima looks at the joint. “It’s not like, you know, a cigarette; hold it in your lungs.”

She lights it and Delphine pulls on the end, watches the flare of that familiar red-orange, then lets smoke spill down her throat.

It burns strangely, dry and sooty, and she wants to cough.

“It’ll hurt,” Cosima says, obviously having encountered her facial expression before, “But there _is_ a school of thought that says it helps the high.”

The smoke departs Delphine’s mouth impolitely, in a flustered cloud, and Cosima takes the joint from between her fingers. Delphine watches her take a much more practiced hit, tendrils of grey snaking out her mouth then flourishing from her nose like dragon’s breath. Delphine forgets, momentarily, why she ever thought it was a good idea to stop kissing her.

 

 

Soon the joint is a stub in an ashtray and Delphine feels lightheaded, unmoored from the rest of her body.

“I still cannot believe you thought I was an _art dealer_ ,” she says, almost to herself, the thought appearing from absolutely nowhere. Her weed-flushed brain conjures an image of another world: Cosima walking up to her in a high-ceilinged gallery, all bright, misdirecting smiles and brushes of her hands. It makes her throat tremble.

Cosima giggles, a stumbling cackle that warms Delphine somewhere below her navel. “I couldn’t help that you were like, a h—hot…” she catches herself, flicks the word away with a hand, “like, mysterious foreigner. I had to think of something.”

“I also cannot believe,” Delphine continues, and there’s a feeling around her mouth of something glossy, trapping her words against her teeth, “that you were immediately going to _seduce_ me.”

It comes out a little more forcefully than intended, and Cosima looks sheepish.

“Delphine, that wasn’t—I didn’t…”

But Delphine smiles, corners of her mouth tucked tight into her cheeks, and it feels like it stretches across the entire room before Cosima’s smiling back, giddy at the edges. They start to laugh in soft little bursts until silence falls again, liquid and malleable.

“You know what?” Delphine says, and Cosima looks at her, slumped in the corner between counter and table, now rolling another joint with absent-minded precision.

“We should steal him back.” The idea is suddenly fully realized in her mind, and she forgets that Cosima can’t see it too – she’s too preoccupied with the mechanics of how to make it work. “My house is fine,” she continues, nodding, and Cosima finally cottons on that she’s talking about George.

She sits up, elbows on the table. “Delphine,” she says, and the word snares against her ear, sketched perfectly in the gap between Cosima’s lips. “Are you trying to tell me you wanna commit a _crime_? What happened to the Delphine who said ‘I can’t ride a horse, I’m not wearing shoes’?”

“Mmm,” Delphine replies, “She is… what did you call her? Too _proper_. And as well, it seems you do not know how to get to my house without him.”

For what feels like a full minute, Cosima just stares at her.

“So…?” she says, leaning in.

“I mean, it’s a pretty big farm, Delphine, I don’t even know where he’ll be now.”

Delphine shrugs. “So the wealthy art dealer will find out. Maybe she heard… maybe…” she trails off, losing the thread. She loses everything, for a moment, and forgets what they were talking about.

Cosima grins. “Espionage isn’t your bag, is it?”

“I have been… compromised, in fairness.”

“I have a better plan,” Cosima says, confident. “When it gets dark we take a walk.”

 

 

They do take a walk – after Delphine feels like her body is her own once again, after the sun drips red as it disappears behind the trees – hopping over the boundary fence at the end of Sarah’s property and into the farm beyond. Under the guise of not wanting to accidentally be separated, Delphine slips her hand into Cosima’s and lets the night hide the smile she can’t quite stop when Cosima squeezes her fingers. Brave as lion lords, in the dark.

 

 

Delphine trusts that Cosima knows what she’s doing as she leads them along a fence line, gravel and dirt crunching under her shoes. She remembers Cosima’s earlier assertion.

“So I am guessing you did not actually have permission to ride over this property?” she asks, and she feels Cosima’s laugh travel between their hands more than she hears it.

“I took a couple of liberties,” she replies.

 

When they reach a ramshackle barn a while later, Cosima’s hand still warm in hers, they accidentally trip a floodlight sensor above the door. Delphine freezes like a startled rabbit, but Cosima’s attention focuses on a field beyond and the very vague outline of what appears to be a horse.

She clucks, and George’s low noise of recognition sounds in reply a few seconds later. “Jackpot.”

“Where is the house?” Delphine asks, still looking nervously at the floodlight.

“Oh, you can’t see it from here. We’re good unless he’s sitting around with a shotgun waiting for us, but I doubt he cares _that_ much.”

Delphine hopes she’s right, and holds the gate for Cosima as she fixes the horse’s shabby bridle over his face and leads him out.

 

The walk back seems to take much longer even with George’s swinging strides quickening their pace – every noise she hears seems to sound like the click of a shotgun catch, every step sounds like someone else’s, and with her spine prickling she anchors herself by a hand to the horse’s rippling shoulder. It takes the edge off, slightly.

However, they make it to the boundary fence without incident, and then Delphine realizes they’ve encountered a problem: getting all three of them back over it.

That is, until Cosima stops and hoists herself onto George’s back, and Delphine suddenly understands what she means to do.

“Do you jump this fence every night?” she asks, incredulous.

Cosima gives her what she thinks is a murky shrug. “It’s not that high.”

“But you… how do you keep him in any field if he knows he can jump fences whenever he pleases?”

Cosima turns the horse in a circle. “He knows he can jump _this_ fence,” she says. “I don’t know if it’s crossed his mind that there are others he can jump too. He’s a horse, Delphine, not a wizard.”

With that, she sends the horse rushing past, hooves heavy on the earth, and Delphine watches the shape of them clear the fence with practiced ease. She climbs over after them, landing back on the ground just as a light goes on in Sarah’s house.

A window opens, and a silhouette hangs out it.

“Cos, I better not have heard what I think I just heard!” Sarah’s voice roars out, and Cosima looks down at Delphine.

“Meet you at your place,” she says, laughter bubbling at the end of her sentence, and sends her heels hard into George’s sides. He takes off like a whip, leaving Delphine to stand open-mouthed in the yard like a gaping trout.

“I’m gonna _burn your bloody caravan down_ , Cosima!” Sarah calls after her, though the threat sounds somewhat empty.

Even so, Delphine makes her way swiftly to her car and swings it out of the driveway, catching up to Cosima further along the road. She stops, but Cosima waves her off.

“I’m fine, I’ll see you soon.”

Reluctantly, Delphine drives the rest of the way home, and when she gets inside she immediately heads upstairs to find sheets for the spare bed, making the assumption that Cosima will not want to go back to Sarah’s yelling at least until the morning.

 

She hears hoofbeats a few minutes later and heads out the back door to meet Cosima, and they put George in the field closest to the house so he stays hidden from the road. When they finally get back inside, moths flit around the light in the living room and all the adrenaline seems to leave Delphine’s body. She feels utterly exhausted, and seeing Cosima in full light for the first time in hours, her expression doesn’t look a lot different.

“You’ll stay?” Delphine asks, and Cosima nods.

“I’m too tired to dodge the question. Lead the way.”

 

 

 

Delphine falls asleep almost immediately, but wakes when she hears the floorboards creak outside her door an hour later. She listens to the sound of footsteps trying move quietly down the stairs, and waits a few minutes before following.

Cosima is at the window in the living room, outlined by the moon that’s finally decided to show its face.

“So are you a guard dog now?” she asks, and Cosima gives her a particularly wolfish smile over her shoulder. Delphine watches the points of her canines shine and feels a shiver.

“Sorry. I know you made the bed up and everything – kinda rude of me. I’ll go back soon.”

Delphine rubs a sleepy eye. “Cosima, I do not think George’s owner—”

“Can we not call him that? It makes me feel like, crazy guilty.”

Acquiescing, Delphine amends her sentence: “I do not think George’s _captor_ —”

“Better.”

“…Is going to find him here. Not tonight.”

She looks out the window at the pale light across the horse’s back, painting him in silvers, and waits for Cosima to respond.

When she doesn’t, Delphine bites her lip. “Well,” she starts, almost not believing she’s saying it, “if you will not sleep in your own bed… Would—would you sleep in mine?”

Cosima turns around fully at that, horse suddenly forgotten.

“I just… if you are too… distracted, sleeping alone. I’m sorry, maybe it was a bad idea.”

“No, no, not a bad idea. Just unexpected.”

Cosima takes a few steps forward. Waits.

“Okay,” Delphine says, feeling suddenly as though she needs to backpedal and figure out what’s just happened. However, before that part of her can catch up she finds herself climbing back up the stairs, Cosima behind her like they’re floating along in a dream.

She gets back into bed, and moments later feels the weight of Cosima beside her, shifting the terrain of the mattress as she lies down. Delphine wants to follow the slope of it and let her body mould into the nooks of Cosima’s, feel again the strong systems of muscle helixing under her skin, press herself into bone and warmth. She wants Cosima to kiss her with that wolf-mouth from the window.

But she won’t ask her to. Instead she lies on an arm and watches Cosima’s features grow a little clearer in the dark, nerves tingling with the same feeling she felt back at the carnival – that bright, tinselled imminence that she knows Cosima feels too.

“So,” Cosima says. “We’re going to sleep.”

“It is three in the morning,” Delphine says, as though Cosima is talking at all about the lateness of the hour.

Cosima makes some low noise of amusement then shifts to face her. “So you _don’t_ want to talk about Aristotle or the finer points of natural selection?”

Delphine laughs into her arm, then runs her teeth over her lip. “I assure you I did not invite you in here to discuss philosophy.”

There’s a beat. Delphine can hear Cosima breathe.

“Why did you invite me, then?”

Her stomach drops. She thinks about parroting back her excuse about distraction, but decides if Cosima is going to be frank there’s an unfairness in her staying ambiguous. She takes in a precarious breath.

“I have been thinking about that kiss.”

Cosima’s surprise reveals itself in the sudden tenseness of her body, the movement travelling across the mattress to Delphine. “And did you… come to any conclusions?” she asks after a weighted moment.

“Nothing… concrete,” Delphine replies, and with only slightly shaking fingers she searches out Cosima’s hand, linking them together and feeling the strong network of bones against her own. “But I am… reconsidering my haste to stay friends.”

“Oh,” Cosima says, barely audible. “That’s um—”

Delphine lets go of her hand and reaches out to trace the shape of her mouth instead, feeling the grooves in her bottom lip under the pad of her thumb. Cosima’s hand travels along the length of her arm and stops at the pulse in her neck; Delphine can feel it drumming against her skin and betraying her stringy nerves. But Cosima doesn’t say anything, doesn’t push anything, just continues to touch with feather-light presses of skin without a hint of motive.

There is a delicate, silken quality to the feeling between them – Cosima’s fingers in murmurs across the blade of her collarbone, Delphine’s thumb brushing across her cheek – like the fragile strength of cobwebs and structures made of sand, and Delphine finds herself holding her breath amidst it.

She starts to think that maybe she needs to reconsider another hasty assumption: she’d thought a few days ago that falling for Cosima was a journey she still had to undertake, but now she thinks she may be drifting along right in the middle of it.

The idea terrifies her. Cosima is the kind of person who would love without expectation, who would love the way she loves the world; brightly and completely, with that shining, technicolor grin that almost permanently lights up her face.

And if she broke her heart, Delphine thinks, Cosima would leave ruins in her wake.

“You okay?” Cosima says.

Delphine nods. “Yes.”

 _For now_.

 

This is where they fall asleep: connected limbs, the breaths between lungs, eyelid creases. When Delphine wakes she is alone in a sea of rumpled sheets and feels like she’s slept for a millennium. Outside, the morning turns from grey to hay-yellows. The sun yawns, stretching up from behind the hills and Delphine stretches with it, feet finding the floor.

She’s not entirely sure, for a while, whether the night before was a dream or not. Then she hears the whistle of the kettle in the kitchen below her. She smiles.

 

 

“So, how many times did you check on him in the four hours of sleep you got?” she asks when she gets downstairs, completely unsurprised to see Cosima in the living room. Cosima turns, coffee nestled against her chest, and grins.

“Only twice,” she replies, and Delphine can see the circles under her eyes.

Delphine looks at her for a moment, and she must fail at hiding her expression because Cosima’s mouth twists. “What?” she asks, “Do I look totally burnt out?”

“I have something for you.”

She finds the bag she shoved in the closet – a last minute hiding place – and pulls the bridle out from within it, feeling Cosima come up behind her. She turns around.

“I was in the um, what do you call it here? The Girl Scouts? My mother—she… anyway, when you said the rope you use on George had rubbed off the hair I thought…” she holds up the bridle and continues her awkward, halting ramble. “The leather… I don’t know how long it will hold. I could not braid it as I wanted to but the knots are secure, I hope. It’s perhaps… you may not—I just wanted to… to give myself something to do here.”

Cosima doesn’t say anything, she just reaches a hand out to send her fingers experimentally over a knot. Finally, she looks up and there is something overwhelmed about the look on her face. “You made this for me? For George?”

“You do not have a bridle, Cosima. I did not think you would accept a real one – not that I would know where to find one here regardless – but you deserve more than some old rope, even if your horse is not technically… _your_ horse.”

“Delphine, I…”

“Please don’t tell me you cannot accept it. I have no use for it myself, it would be a waste.”

“I don’t really know what to say. This is totally, totally awesome, I—”

Delphine kisses her.

It’s nothing, a second of her mouth against Cosima’s in a dusty foyer, fingers light on her cheek – not even long enough for Cosima to register it’s happened before she’s pulling away, but it’s enough. Enough for Cosima to understand the intention, and she brims with a smile that’s threatens to spill into something uncontained.

She looks at the bridle in her hands, and then there is some sudden streak of wickedness in the grin she sends Delphine’s way.

“So if George has a proper bridle now… does that mean I can teach you to ride for real?”

 

 

Delphine objects to the notion that a slightly more useful rope around George’s face constitutes _proper_ , but she lets Cosima usher her back upstairs to sit on her bed while she rifles through her closet anyway.

“Cosima, I can dress my—”

“Listen, if we’re doing this _properly_ …” and Delphine feels like she’s emphasising that word entirely for her benefit, “You should wear some pants probably. Do you have pants?”

“They are in the drawer. But _you_ are not wearing any, so…”

“I’m not riding.”

“What?”

Cosima grins wide, and her chin tilts with something smug. “ _You’re_ riding. I’m teaching.”

 

 

George is sun-warm, blood-warm, breathing under her legs in gentle swells, and Delphine is thoroughly distracted from it by the slide and grip of Cosima’s hands on her, tugging and nudging her into position as she idly points out the reasoning for her movements.

“Delphine,” she says, and she snaps back into herself.

“Sorry, Cosima, yes?”

“You didn’t listen to anything I just said, did you?”

Delphine bites her lip. “I heard something about knees?”

Cosima rolls her eyes. “ _Don’t_ grip with them. If, by some crazy miracle, he goes faster than a walk, grip with your calves – or grab his mane, whatever, your legs are so long you could wrap them like three times around his body if you wanted, just don’t grip with your knees or you’ll likely… be on the ground.”

“Okay,” Delphine says, squeezing experimentally.

 

Cosima gives her pointers for almost half an hour, though Delphine knows she’s not going to retain much, if any of it – too caught up in the way Cosima floats along beside her with spectacular smiles and animated hands, explaining gaits and points of balance and the distribution of power through the horse beneath her.

 

When she finally gets down her legs ache from the prolonged and odd position and Cosima is looking at her with yet another expression Delphine can’t quite pinpoint. There’s something like fire in it though; something bright and glinting, and it draws her closer.

“Thank you,” she says, only a few steps away.

“As usual I don’t know what you’re thanking me for, but you’re welcome,” Cosima replies, taking a step closer. “No one else I’ve met here has been that interested in… well, anything I do, so you know, it’s cool. That you’ve let me drag you through it all.”

Delphine finds one of Cosima’s hands, runs her thumb over the knuckle. “Will you… stay here again tonight?”

Cosima beams, and it’s almost shy. “Of course. Though I should probably go grab a couple of things from home – mind if I borrow your car? Sarah will probably literally kill me if she sees George right now.”

“No, absolutely, take it.”

She smiles again and then suddenly seems to realize the horse in question is still standing right next to them, and drops Delphine’s hand. She brushes a finger over the line of the bridle on George’s nose. “This is still totally awesome, you know,” she says, and Delphine gets the distinct impression it’s not just the physical joins of rope she’s talking about.

“It suits him,” she replies anyway, running a hand over the damp marks of sweat her legs have left on the horse’s back.

Cosima watches her for a moment. “Delphine,” she says.

Delphine looks at her, not expecting the next sentence out of Cosima’s mouth.

“Did you want to get this horse back because you’re totally a little in love with him?”

She laughs, stupid and free, while Cosima pretends to be serious.

“If I leave you two alone you’re not gonna elope or anything, right? You’ll be here when I get back?”

“I promise,” Delphine says with mock sincerity.

“Okay.”

The firelight in Cosima’s eyes is back as she stares at Delphine a moment longer, and Delphine feels acutely as though they could be alone in the universe, trembling around the edge of whatever it is – this unspoken _thing_ neither of them are quite ready to tumble into.

Or, so she thinks.

Cosima takes the bridle off George’s face and clutches it firmly in a fist. “Right, I’m gonna go. See you in… whatever, like twenty minutes?”

Delphine nods. “I am going to shower all of this… horse… off.”

She falters. Cosima, at the word _shower_ , rakes her eyes up the length of Delphine’s body before dragging them to her face, and for a moment she doesn’t even seem to realize she’s done it. Delphine runs her tongue over her bottom lip. She’s felt similar looks before, but none of them have felt quite the same as this.

It sets her on fire.

 

 

She tries to ignore it as she goes inside, and ignore it all the way upstairs to the bathroom where she turns on the shower and sheds her clothes. She ignores it all the way up until her hand slides over her stomach to the cusp of her right thigh, a shudder curling up the base of her spine as tepid water beats down on her shoulders.

Delphine chews on her lip. It is utterly absurd, she thinks, to be standing naked in her shower and thinking of a woman who really, she barely knows – a _woman_ at all, considering a few weeks ago the idea hadn’t even crossed her mind. _Absurd_ , she thinks, even as her fingers pattern circles over the skin of her thigh – even as she remembers the night before, the events of the last few weeks.

She should stop. She really, really should stop.

Then her eyes slide closed and her hand slides south and she forgets _why_ , exactly, she was going to do that, her mouth falling open in a silent gasp as she uses her free hand to turn the shower off.

Her fingers stroke deep and wet and the thought of Cosima’s tongue replacing them sends her hips bucking into her palm, her head falling back against the shower wall.

She doesn’t hear Cosima until she’s already through the door, on some tangent about her car until she stops dead when she realizes what’s happening.

“Oh shit, Delphine, I’m—”

Delphine jumps, any possible reason for Cosima catching her like this dying before she can think of it. She simply gapes at her, redness creeping along her cheekbones.

“I’m sorry, I didn’t – you just left the door open, I’ll leave—I’ll shut it on… on the way out.”

The chant of _absurd_ starts back up in her head as she scrambles properly upright and the words “Wait, Cosima,” leap out of her mouth.

Cosima, seemingly holding her breath, turns back around.

“Stay.”

It’s just one word, quivering in the afternoon air, but it mobilizes Cosima into taking off her glasses and her dress. She steps into the shower and just _looks_ , entranced, and her eyes are everywhere before settling on Delphine’s face in a silent question.

Delphine doesn’t know what else to do now that she has what she wants, so she leans out from the wall and kisses her: kisses with teeth, kisses with templed lips and the need that has built itself a house inside her since the day they met.

Cosima kisses right back and she immediately feels like something is climbing out of her, her heart maybe, as it beats too fast – thrilled, fearful, hysterical with desire – and she sucks at Cosima’s mouth, feels urgency stoke itself back up, grabbing at any part of Cosima she can find.

Then Cosima touches her and she gasps, Cosima puts Delphine’s own fingers back on her clit then covers them with her own and she _gasps_ , her back arching towards the pressure. If she were less desperate for Cosima’s fingers to be inside her she’d be embarrassed about how easily they slide, how slick the join of their hands has already become, but all she can do is grab her wrist and guide her further until she’s clenching around the hard knots of her knuckles and whining into Cosima’s cheek.

“ _Shit_ , Delphine,” Cosima says in some ragged spiral of breath, and Delphine doesn’t know how to feel when she looks down to see that Cosima’s watching the hopeless little jerks of her hips around her motionless fingers, her mouth wide open in something resembling awe.

Then Cosima looks almost curiously at her and looms up on the balls of her feet, bracing a hand against the shower wall. Her eyes are black, pupils blown.

Slowly, watching her mouth, Cosima draws her fingers out of Delphine in a way that makes her entire body feel empty, and she feels a moan wrench itself out of her lungs without her permission.

She leans in, finds Cosima’s earlobe, sucks it between her lips as her fingers dip torturously slow back inside her. “Cosima. _Cosima_.”

Cosima strokes up and Delphine reels with the sensation, rocking forward and wrapping a leg around Cosima’s hip. Cosima groans into her neck, pressing in, curling her fingers, putting the strength of her pelvis behind a new thrust of her hand.

It’s not long before Delphine finds herself begging – the word _please, please_ peels off her tongue in shakes and her hips gracelessly follow the thrust of Cosima’s fingers, steady as a heartbeat. She feels almost seasick with the wild roll of her own hips, moans like tempests, shrill siren calls against greying tile and water-stained glass. She feels _primitive_.

Cosima’s teeth wear the skin of her neck into blossoms of colour and her free hand pulls at her thigh, spreading the part of her legs – _please, please_ – until finally she tips, falls, rides into the tide of her orgasm, nails biting hard into the wings of Cosima’s shoulder blades.

She slumps back against the shower wall, muscles quaking, and pulls Cosima toward her.

“I guess you came to a conclusion, then?” Cosima asks, and Delphine can feel the way her hand sticks against her waist. She bites her lip.

“If it was too much—”

Cosima steps forward, presses the entire hot length of her body up against Delphine’s, her thigh slipping between hers to nudge against the wetness that’s still pulsing—and Delphine sinks onto it, flustered by the grin Cosima wears when she hears her sharp exhale of breath. She wants to feel embarrassed by the fact that she’s still not satisfied, but Cosima is looking at her like she still can’t quite believe she’s awake and her hands have tightened on her hips, holding her in place.

“You’re definitely way too much. But like, not in bad way.”

Delphine smiles, and hovers a hand over Cosima’s chest. “Cosima, I want to…”

“No,” she says, then realizes how it sounds, “I mean, wait.” She leans in. “I’m not done with you yet.”

Delphine feels a fresh rush of arousal at her low, golden tone of voice, and lets out a shaky breath. “Okay.”

Cosima looks at her. Cosima _searches_ her for something, studies the lines of her face and the shimmer of her eyes, then tilts her chin up.

“What were you thinking about, when I walked in?”

“You,” Delphine says without hesitation, and watches Cosima’s tongue flick over her top teeth. The hands on her hips start to feel like they’re leaving a mark.

“I’m not gonna like, ask for details if you don’t want—”

“I thought,” Delphine trips up on the words, lets out another breath to steady herself. “I thought… about your mouth, here…” she presses, grinds down against Cosima’s thigh and watches her eyelids flutter, feels a strange surge of power. A hand comes up, her thumb dragging across Cosima’s lips in the same action as the night before – this time with _intent_ , and she feels Cosima’s breath catch in her throat.

She replaces her thumb with her mouth, finds Cosima’s tongue and laves against it in one long stroke of heat. She knows she should stop, step out from this overcharged moment and process what’s happening, but her body ignores it, her body wants Cosima like lightning wants to find a place to strike – aching with some storm of carneous electricity.

A hand slides around to the small of Cosima’s back and tucks under the band of her underwear, reaching to cup her ass and pull her thigh harder against her swollen clit as Cosima kisses her hard. She swallows the jolt of noise Delphine lets out, swallows the moan as her hands tug on her hips and they start some broken, artless attempt at rhythm, the chunk of muscle in Cosima’s thigh slick and flexing and _not-quite-enough_.

Then suddenly Cosima stops. She breaks away from her mouth, shifts her leg, takes a half-step back, and Delphine wants to protest at the sudden loss of contact.

“What…”

Cosima’s eyes travel down her body, flushed and damp with sweat, and Delphine’s eyes follow. She watches Cosima’s thigh glisten and squeezes where her hand rests around Cosima’s bicep. Cosima looks up.

“I thought maybe I’d fulfil a fantasy,” she says. And then she kneels.

Delphine thinks she might collapse with that implication, and when Cosima finds her with her mouth she almost does. Her hands anchor themselves in her dreads, and Cosima’s hand guides her thigh over her shoulder.

She presses a heel into Cosima’s ribs and Cosima groans against her flesh – she’s not an expert at this, but she’s eager and her mouth is warm and Delphine is so _wet_ , so wet she can feel it in the crease of her thighs, can feel the soak of it on Cosima’s tongue.

She says _Cosima_ in a desperate press of syllables, fingers digging hard into Cosima’s skull, and she tries unsuccessfully to control the frantic rut of her hips against Cosima’s face.

Cosima doesn’t seem to care, she just secures her hands around her legs and sucks hard on her clit until Delphine can’t breathe, coming so forcefully she almost loses her balance again.

Cosima rocks back on her heels and moves to wipe her mouth, but Delphine pulls on her chin, tugs her up and kisses her. She gently tongues the slick taste of herself off Cosima’s lips and off her cheeks, feels the vibration of Cosima’s groan and the dig of her nails, presses the pads of her thumbs into the softness under her jaw.

“Delphine,” Cosima says against her mouth, and it sounds like _I need you_.

Delphine pulls back an inch and looks into the black of Cosima’s eyes, wondering if her pupils are as dark. “May… Can I?”

Smiling, Cosima takes hold of Delphine’s wrists and rubs her thumbs over the thin cords of sinew below the heel of her hand. “Definitely, but… can we – sorry, this is super lame, but I kinda totally don’t want to embarrass myself by you know… I don’t want it all to be over five seconds after you touch me. Take it as a compliment.”

Delphine chuckles. “Okay. But will you…” she tries not to sound as desperate as she feels. “Will you stay here? Not only tonight, but… longer?”

Narrowing her eyes, Cosima grins lopsidedly. “Are you _sure_ you’re not a lesbian? Like, should I just get a U-Haul while I’m out and go the whole hog right now?”

Delphine doesn’t understand the joke, though she knows it is one. She mirrors Cosima’s smile.

“Your car needs gas,” Cosima says suddenly, and Delphine’s smile is replaced by a frown.

“What?”

“That’s what I came in here for, before you uh, _distracted_ me. I just remembered. I was going to take it to the gas station so I was gonna ask if you wanted anything.”

“Only something I am apparently not allowed until you get back,” Delphine says, and she sort of hates that she can feel herself pouting.

Cosima rolls her eyes. “So cute,” she says, then steps away. “Shower. I’ll be back before you know it.”

And then, not being able to help herself she leans back in and kisses her slowly before pulling away. It feels strangely like a thank you.

“Bye.”

 

Cosima is gone for over an hour before Delphine finally hears the car in the driveway, and the slam of its door clues her in to Cosima’s mood.

“Why is Sarah such a _bitch_?” she says when she walks in the door, and Delphine assumes the question is rhetorical.

She leans back against the counter and sips at the cup of tea in her hands. “Do you want to talk about it?”

At her utter calmness Cosima seems to lose momentum.

“If I hadn’t seen you really naked like an hour ago,” she says, distracted by the length of Delphine’s crossed legs, “I’d be asking why you were standing around in your underwear right now.”

Delphine grins over the rim of her mug. “It is my house, is it not?”

“ _Technically_ …” Cosima says, then drops her gaze to the gap of skin between Delphine’s tank and her underwear.

She repeats her previous question: “Do you want to talk about Sarah?”

Cosima makes some low murmur of indistinguishable noise and tilts her head, eyes brazen over her body in a way that is starting to feel familiar. “I really, really don’t.”

Delphine puts down her mug.

 

Upstairs, she watches the skeletal ripple of Cosima’s ribs under her skin as she lifts her dress over her head, watches the flex of muscle in her arms as she reaches behind herself to undo the clasp of her bra.

Delphine’s mouth is dry and her palms are damp. Cosima’s breast sits firm in her hand and she feels her heart strumming inside her chest, beating like bird wings, and then she leans down to take a nipple in her mouth, roll her tongue over it and nick with her teeth, and Cosima strains up, a slow smile stretching across her face.

Delphine kisses her way back up to Cosima’s lips, kisses until Cosima is all soft limbs against her, that taut swell of stomach, wet mouth. She guides them to the bed and crawls up Cosima’s body, settles a hand over the jut of her hipbone and latches her mouth to her neck, waits until Cosima is shifting in restless waves beneath her. Then she works her hand beneath Cosima’s underwear and strokes, tentative and experimental. Cosima moans, a knee riding up the side of Delphine’s body to nestle in the dip of her waist, and her hand closes around the elbow of Delphine’s arm.

Propping herself up, Delphine looks at Cosima.

“You okay?” Cosima asks, somewhat breathless.

Delphine smiles. “Are you?”

She thinks, probably, Cosima would like to answer her, but Delphine presses in with two fingers, slides them deep, and Cosima’s mouth goes slack.

Carefully, she attempts to mimic Cosima’s actions from earlier, thrusting with the weight of her hips, and Cosima arches up, whining, gasping, but she lacks the urgency Delphine wants her to have – that _she_ had when Cosima was inside _her_ , and she thinks she must be doing something wrong. She leans in so their lips are almost touching.

“Tell me what you want,” Delphine says, just above a whisper. Cosima’s eyelids flutter.

“More,” she says after a moment, and Delphine obliges, changing from two fingers to three and listening to the guttural noise sprouting from somewhere in Cosima’s chest, feeling her legs spread wider.

She smiles, picks up the thrust of her arm and soon Cosima is whimpering, wresting a hand down between them to circle her clit and keening on the end of every breath.

Delphine returns her mouth to her neck, marking and licking and sucking hard until she feels Cosima’s entire body go taut as a bowstring beneath her. She slows her fingers, waits for the rock of Cosima’s hips to subside, then looks at her.

Cosima smiles with teeth.

“I think I need some practice,” Delphine says.

“That can be arranged.”

 

 

She learns Cosima’s body in no time at all, really, and for two weeks Cosima stays with her, her presence starting to permeate not only the house but some deeply hidden space in Delphine’s chest.

 

 

 

 

 

And then she gets a phone call.

It’s evening and Cosima is lounging out in the tub, a foot of hot water warming the lower half of her body as she lets a joint marinate between her teeth. Delphine wanders outside with her phone still in her hand and just stands on the porch.

“You look like you just stuck a knife in the toaster,” Cosima says, tapping ash onto the ground.

“I just got offered a job,” Delphine says, and the sentence sounds strange in her mouth.

“What?” Cosima asks, sitting up.

“It is… with a facility in the city. A very good job, actually, I… got a personal recommendation. I could start on Monday.”

“Could?”

“Well,” she starts, “it would mean… I would have to leave here tomorrow, or the next day, at the latest.”

Cosima shrugs. “Why wouldn’t you take it, though? Isn’t it what you wanna do?”

Putting the phone down, Delphine shucks her clothes and climbs into the bath, awkwardly folding her legs over Cosima’s. She finds Cosima’s hand, the pads of her fingers wrinkled from how long she’s been sitting in the water.

“It would mean leaving _you_ ,” she says, even as she thinks _don’t_.

Cosima looks at her with some delicately-held look of adoration, and then it vanishes from her face. Delphine can see the grit of her teeth behind her cheek. She sighs. “I’m nobody, Delphine, you shouldn’t be giving up a potential career to stay in the middle of nowhere with me.”

Delphine frowns. “You are not nobody to me, Cosima.” And she thinks: _I love you_.

She looks at their hands. Bone networks, shadows of veins, their knuckles slotted together.

“You… you could come with me.”

“Delphine…”

“What? I have an apartment – that I can _keep_ , now – you could do whatever you want. You could go back to school. You could learn to _cook_ ,” she says, jabbing her knee with a finger.

Cosima studies her face a moment. “And if I humour you on this totally absurd hypothetical journey you’re taking right now: what about George?”

Delphine shrugs. “My building does not allow pets…” she’s relieved to see a grin spark across Cosima’s face, “but there are places not far – reachable by train, to keep him. I would help you pay his board, if that is what you wanted.”

“He’s not even… my horse, Delphine, it’s…”

“So I will send his owner a cheque. Cosima, I…” _I love you_ , “I don’t want to lose you.”

Something in the softening of Cosima’s jaw makes Delphine realize she’s won, and she flicks water off the ends of her fingers into Cosima’s face.

“ _Hey_ ,” she says, indignant.

“Well you could _say_ something,” Delphine retorts.

Cosima shakes her head and lapses into silence again for a moment. Then she squeezes her eyes shut, opens them again. They glitter with laughter. “Sorry, I’m just – I realized I’m really high and you’re like, totally naked. And we’re in a bath. And this is… crazy, Delphine. You might actually be crazy.”

She’s not sure she’s ever heard someone say the word _crazy_ with such tenderness before, and she feels that rumble in her chest again. _I love you_. She won’t say it – in words, at least, but she does lean forward and kiss Cosima’s mouth until she melts into it, fingers light on her chest.

Pulling back, she looks into the liquid, nebulous wells of Cosima’s eyes. “You still have not said yes, Cosima.”

Cosima presses her lips together, rolls them between her teeth. There’s a beat, like the world has stilled for a moment.

 

Then she smiles.

 


End file.
